GLG News by Mr. Jack Lifton, Managing Director
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
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Will Large Passenger Aircraft Production Be Limited By A Lack Of Rhenium?
May 15, 2008
ANALYSIS-Aircraft demand to keep hi-tech metals high | uk.reuters.com
At a conference in Barcelona last month entitled "Metals in the Aerospace Industry" an industry analyst forecast a total demand for 800, 000, 000 lbs of metal to build between 8,000 and 12,000 multi-engine jet passenger aircraft by 2020. Although most of the metal to be consumed was identified as aluminum and its alloys it was also pointed out that up to 3% of 'other' metals would be needed inparticualr for constructing the high temperature 'superalloys' needed for jet engines. This 3% would be up to 24,000,000 pounds, 11,500 metric tons of 'other metals.' Just one metric ton or so per plane. One of the most critical metals to be needed is rhenium. The global supply of new rhenium annually is today at an all time high, 40 metric tons per annum. Will that be enough to construct engines for as many as 12,000 passenger aircraft as well as an unspecified number of military aircraft and rockets for the exploration of space, satellite placement, and weaponry? Certainly not.
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The Delaware Regulations For The Resale Of Scrap Metal Should Be Federally Mandated Or Rescinded
May 7, 2008
Scrap dealers protest new regulations for resale of metal | www.philly.com
If scrap dealers were made to account for the purchase of their wares; i.e., to affirm that their seller had leagl title to the goods, then the US scrap industry's small, family type businesses, would fail.
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May 6, 2008
Russia's Car Market Will Pass Germany's In Two Years Says Ghosn | goldsea.com
The first industrial revolution in the west highgraded out the world's then known and accessible metal ores and energy minerals. Extraction and refining technologies have since kept up with the declining grades of ores and minerals accessible with today's infrastructures and machinery. But finally, with the explosion of demand from Asia, the age of profligate mining of metals and energy minerals is over. Price alone cannot any longer dictate supply.
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Is GM's Bob Lutz, Nuts, About The Volt?
April 28, 2008
GM's Lutz Expresses 'Growing Confidence' In Chevy Volt Timetable | online.wsj.com
The CEO of Toyota, the one and only only global car company with experience at mass producing vehicles using hybrid, gasoline-electric, power trains said, just a month ago that the lithium-ion battery is not ready for mass production. GM has received, so far, after an investment of , perhaps, one billion dollars, just two 'prototype' lithium ion batteries for beta (actual, but not necessarily final version) testing in Volt simulacra, i.e. bodies, chases, and power trains that simulate a production vehicle) beginning this summer. The whole point is to be able to deliver a car which can run 40 miles only on its battery, after being charged fully, by being, for example, 'plugged in' to the household electric service (For how long??). The Volt will also have an on board a gasoline engine/ generator able to run the vehicle's electric motor. The same system would work with a lead-acid battery set. The car would be heavier though. So GM is waiting and spending and fretting.
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April 22, 2008
Beijing Pressures Automakers to Improve Efficiency | www.nytimes.com
The Chinese government's demand that auto makers produce electric and internal combustion-electric (hybrid) vehicles for the Chinese domestic market has created a conflict in the global demand for minor metals. All car makers need minor metals that are critical to the production of the power train of their vehicles, All non-Chinese car makers prefer to keep their best technology close to home, for competitive advantage, Most of the critical minor metals for car production are solely sourced from China, China has systematically reduced the export of such metals and allocated them for products made in China, When the demand for such metals in China equals the supply from China it will no longer be possible to make products critically dependent on such metals outside of China, If no commercial lithium ion battery system is in production within the next five years it will no longer be possible to produce a nickel metal hydride battery outside of China.
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April 9, 2008
The Last Days of Cheap Chinese | www.slate.com
GM's short sighted purchasing management, and probably Ford's as well, pinned its hopes for being able to make a profit primarily on reducing its costs of labor and materials by shifting as much as possible of its parts production to the People's republic of China. Just 3 years ago, in 2005, GM's global purchasing czar, Bo Andersson, told his subordinates that he expected to source 30% of his 'spend,' more than 30 billion dollars a year in the PRC by 2007! Ford's clueless descendant of the founder of industrial mass production, William Clay Ford, Jr, went even farther afield. He told an audience of Chinese in Shanghai last year that his 'vision' for Ford was a 60% dependence on Chinese sourcing! Both of these targeted agendas were made by men literally ignorant of the economics of the global economy, but neither of them hesitated for a moment to drive the OEM American automotive supply industry bankrupt leaving both of these clueless men without a backup plan.
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April 7, 2008
Why no one wants Delphi | www.247wallst.com
Delphi is on life-support with no health insurance, and General Motors wants the world to think that it is offering to pay some of Delphi's bills out of the goodness of its corporate heart, and for old times sake. The truth is that the sheer and massive incompetence of GM purchasing management has failed in 9 years to separate Delphi's fortunes from those of GM even though that was the actual reason that GM created Delphi nearly a decade ago.
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April 4, 2008
GM to managers: Volt is No. 1 priority | www.autonews.com
GM's requirement that only those who say yes to Rick Wagoner and Bob Lutz may advance to management has left it without any managers or engineers who have the moral strength to say that the company's program to bring the Chevrolet Volt to market by 2010 would have been better done, with a much higher chance of success, with a lead-acid/nickel metal hydride battery system, since both of those systems have been proven in actual, not simulated testing, over real, not virtual time. In addition it is clear that GM is building a smaller and lighter Volt than they were showing so as to get the maximum range and performance out of lithium batteries that are not living up to expectations.
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Is Toyota's Prius Being Dumped On The US Market?
April 3, 2008
Jim Press: Prius was 100% subsidized by Japan | www.autonews.com
It has always been a mystery to OEM American automotive industry financial analysts how Toyota could afford to build and sell the Prius, and any other hybrids, without seemingly taking into account the escalating costs of the nickel metal hydride battery, NiMH, packs due to the commodity metal supercycle that has taken place entirely during the product life of the Prius. The raw materials for the NiMH battery pack used in the 1999 Prius, 60 lbs of nickel, 24 lbs of lanthanum, and 3 lbs of coablt cost a total of less than $400.00 then. The same battery today has a raw material cost of $1600.00. The added costs of manufacturing the components and assembling them, along with a built-in computer management system at least doubles the cost of the final 'battery.' Are the batteries recycled? If so, where? Perhaps the solution to these mysteries plus the answer to the question "How much were the development costs of the NiMH battery?" is simple; the answer,for Toyota, may be zero.
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April 2, 2008
Will lithium ion get replaced? Longer lasting, recyclable batteries due in laptops this summer | venturebeat.com
The lihtium-ion batteries that have the best performance characteristics for vehicular application are not safe or cheap enough for use in mass produced vehicles. Advances in nickel metal hydride and other technologies, including those based on silver-zinc and those based on magnesium in combination with various other metals, are overtaking lithium-ion systems.
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March 26, 2008
Fukui: Nickel battery is best bet for hybrid | www.autonews.com
Honda has more experience engineering, designing, and manufacturing internal combustion engines than anyone else on earth. It is thus, by default, the most experienced and successful at the quality control and servicing of OEM automotive power trains. Are these the reasons why it has chosen to use nickel metal hydride batteries for its entry into the market for designed-from-the-wheels-up hybrid cars?
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March 17, 2008
Local businessman charged with fraud | www.suntimes.com
Did General Motors' purchasing relax its standards for oversight and for credit allocation for FUCI Metals, because FUCI was set up as a minority business enterprise? Or, was GM in on it from the beginning, but lost control of it?
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March 17, 2008
Diesels make cents, but Detroit still slow to embrace them | www.detnews.com
How are the Detroit Three reacting to the multiplicity of power train types among which they must choose in order to satisfy political expediency? They must choose among the many chocies and the choices are dictated by economics more than they are by politics.
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The Plastech Cover Up; The Legacy of Wasted Effort By The American OEM Automotive Industry
March 10, 2008
Plastech Hopes To Resolve JCI Tiff | www.freep.com
Plastech Engineering, now in bankruptcy, was advertised as the largest minority owned and operated OEM automotive plastics supplier. In fact, it was a synthetic business, a money losing enterprise, created by the pressure, for minority content, which was generated by various Federal and State agencies that required any company holding or bidding on any state or federal contracts or services to meet arbitrarily imposed targets for percentages of their total outside purchases of parts and services by sourcing them from so-called minority businesses. Johnson Controls International, in turn, was pressured by its customers, OEM car makers, to 'mentor' Plastech Engineering; i.e., to become responsible for insuring that the big customer's minority content requirements were met. Its reward was to also count the production of Plastech towards its own minority content requirements. But raw materials price increases over the last 5 years, in particular, have destroyed any hope of continuing.
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March 10, 2008
Beware of These Strong Buys | www.fool.com
Silicon is one of the most common chemical elements in the earth's crust; it is also exteremely accessible, since the vast majority of the beach sands on this planet are fairly pure silicon dioxide which have been produced by eons of weathering of silicate rocks and quartz. Tellurium on the other hand, although relatively abundant, in the earth's crust is only accessible to us as a minor constituent of most copper (sulfide) ores, or as a minor constutent of some other less common metal ores such as some of those of silver, gold, palladium, and tungsten, for example. The ultra purification of silicon to the purity required for the manufacture of silicon solar cells is very expensive, but it is today commonly undertaken to produce the silicon used in manufacturing the bases for integrated circuits. Tellurium on the other hand is only produced as a byproduct of copper refining and then only 1 oz of tellurium is produced for each 500 pounds of copper.
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March 7, 2008
GM, Toyota Doubtful on Fuel Cells' Mass Use | online.wsj.com
Last week GM's most important 'car guy' let the cat out of the bag. GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz let it be known that for the first time the market is driving GM's decisions on which products to take forward on a green path. The public clearly does not want a car for which there is no fuel available today and no plan at all to ever make it, the hydrogen fuel, widely available. GM will therefore try to bring battery powered cars to the mass market along with diesel powered vehicles; its goal is to make those two power trains dominant in its product line by 2015. Some GM executives who aren't with this program will have to go.
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March 5, 2008
GM Announces New Hybrid System | www.forbes.com
The announcement by GM at the Geneva Motor Show that it will be offering for sale, next year, a high end SUV with a lithium iron phosphate battery equipped two mode hybrid power train followed the announcement the day before by Daimler of a high end Mercedes S-class hybrid to be introduced next year with, I believe the same lithium ion battery system. This leaves only BMW to be heard from with regard to whether or not it will offer a hybrid vehicle with the same type of battery. The three OEM car companies, GM, Daimler, and BMW have been running a(n), apparently, successful strategic development alliance based in suburban Detroit for the last few years to produce a safe(r), reliable, long lived, lithium technology battery. GM and Daimler are now voting with their checkbooks to bring the still very expensive battery, apparently developed far enough to be tested by consumers, to the market place. But these new hybrid cars and SUVs may still not yet be ready for the European market.
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Has Daimler Decided To Use A High End Lithium Utilizing Hybrid Mercedes To Head Off Tesla?
March 3, 2008
Conti's lithium-ion cell to power Mercedes hybrid | uk.reuters.com
Any new battery technology for use in a passenger or freight carrying vehicle will start out as very, very, expensive; its cost of development and prototype production will have to recovered somehow in the selling price of the cars. Assuming even that Daimler corporation has in hand, or is extremely confident that it has under way, some appropriately sized working 'lithium batteries' upon which it is willing to base some limited production then why, in opposition to Toyota's original introduction of nickel metal hydride batteries at the low to mid-level of vehicles, is Daimler going to release a 'flagship' model hybrid with the battery developed by Continental?
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It's Not The Cost Of Disposal, Stupid, It's The Recovery Of Raw Materials By Recycling For Re-use!
March 3, 2008
Car Makers Seek Battery That Keeps Going | www.forbes.com
James Carville famously said of political campaign issues, "It's the economy, stupid!" For OEM heavy manufacturing, "It's the raw materials availability, stupid!"
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February 22, 2008
South African PGM production woes brighten life for North American PGM mining, exploration | www.mineweb.com
The once every 7 years or so platinum group metals, PGMs, shortage panic is off and running. The producers and trading companies are also panicked. Costs of producing new platinum are skyrocketing and the producers and traders know that this will ignite a new emphasis on replacing PGMs with much cheaper metals and processes. In 2001 the electrical and electronics industry responded to the last panic by replacing palladium completely and sending the metal into a surplus condition which is still in existence. Unless the Chinese and Indian car industries mandate catalytic converters very soon the current panic could break the PGM market for good.
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